We are only a short seventeen days away from the NFL draft, and while I share everyone’s excited urgency for Draft Day to get here already, I advise Packers fans to wait and savor this moment. After all, once the draft is over, we will be faced with the long dark night of the quietest portion of the NFL calendar.
While the NFL world gears up for its second most important night of the year, the Packers have put themselves into a position where, while they have many needs, none are so pressing that they must do something about them.
Or at least, that is the popular sentiment. I do agree that the front office has made supplementary moves to the roster that should allow the team to operate a little more freely in the draft. However, there are certain realities that the Packers will have to face, especially regarding everyone’s favorite position: the cornerback room.
I’ve written about this before, but it’s still surprising to look back and realize the full extent to which Green Bay has neglected to add talent here. The last time the Packers even selected a cornerback in the top 100 draft spots was Eric Stokes in 2021. I feel like that’s pretty well known at this point. What might surprise you is the last time before that. That would be Jaire Alexander and Josh Jackson, taken three years earlier in rounds one and two of the 2018 draft. Then Kalen King and Josh Jones of the 2017 draft. Not exactly a murders row of picks who worked out in the Packers favor. Did that stretch of heavy investment with little to no payoff incentivize a change in the Packers’ philosophy regarding cornerback? It’s hard to imagine otherwise, considering only one high end corner selection in the seven years since.
The Packers have been able to get by in other ways. They’ve been able to turn some low cost moves (such as drafting Carrington Valentine in the seventh round and bringing in Keisean Nixon) into playable options at boundary corners, while converting Javon Bullard into a nickel corner to handle ⅓ of the corner duties. While Bullard did have a breakout season in 2025 and should be a viable long term option for the Packers, Valentine and Nixon failed to hold their own once the pass rush collapsed late in the season. In my opinion, teams with Super Bowl aspirations can’t rely on corners like that.
Having your pass rush and your secondary working in tandem is, of course, a recipe for a championship defense. You’ve got to look no further than the two most recent examples. Philadelphia and Seattle’s secondaries were beastly units, but their pass rush was stellar in addition. One unit did not need to prop up the other, because they could stand on their own legs. Deficiencies like this are what has cost the Packers in the playoffs, over and over.
Not to mention that, purely from a numbers perspective, the Packers need to start adding more corners to the roster, because after the 2026 season, they’ll have just one! As it currently stands, Benjamin St-Juste is the only player on the roster tied to Green Bay in 2027, and I’d probably guess right now that neither Nixon or Valentine will be retained next year, barring a major breakout. With bills coming due on Jordan Love / Micah Parsons, you can bet top dollar that the front office wants those spots to be filled by players on cheap rookie contracts.
The problem is, that's a major gamble unto itself, and it’s complicated by the Super Bowl window that the Packers are in the middle of (and to be clear, that’s a good problem to be had). The complication arises from the urgency of quality play needed, and if you think you can trust a rookie to produce that.
Of course, the ideal solution is to take those rookies now, give them a year in the system to either earn those starting jobs early, or develop a year until Nixon/Valentine are gone. You’re still gambling if you live in that world, but at least you are setting your rookies up for a win-win situation. Green Bay has shown plenty of appetite for making their rookie players wait before throwing themselves to the fire (E.G. Golden, Matthew). This isn’t a prospect article, so I’ll leave the exact names of the addition (or additions? I’d really love to double dip and really attack the problem from a numbers perspective).
Then of course, there is the inevitable second “opening” of free agency. I’m speaking, of course, about the period from which free agent signings no longer cost a team comp picks in the following year's draft. That deadline is 4pm ET on the first Monday following the NFL draft, which would make it on April 27th of this year. You can absolutely guarantee that there will be another flurry of free agent signings around that point, as teams like the Packers who intend to stockpile picks can finally wave a little more money around.
Kudos, by the way, to the NFL for creating yet another period of exciting activity for people to focus on. I’m sure we’ll get reports of agreed upon contracts before the actual deadline, probably as soon as the draft ends, coinciding with UDFA agreements. They can be agreed upon, just not signed until after the deadline.
Are there any avenues for an addition there? Perhaps, but it’s almost certainly found in a familiar face. Trevon Diggs is still floating around as a free agent, and was recently wearing Packers gear while working out with Micah Parsons. Diggs’ time with the Packers in 2025 was short lived at best (if the Packers choose not to re-sign Diggs, he’ll be a great trivia question in a couple of years). But, in my opinion, why not bring him in? At this point in free agency, he’ll almost assuredly cost very little for a one year prove it deal. Say you get him for $3.5 million next year. You’d be paying your entire cornerback room $17.4 million next year against the cap, almost half what Trent McDuffie will cost Los Angeles by himself.
That’s all well and good from an accounting perspective, but none of the corners on Green Bay’s roster will give you a level of play close to what McDuffie gives you either (barring a major breakout or insane rookie performance). The cost of doing business in the NFL is expensive, and Green Bay has chosen a different avenue to spend its money on.
Benjamin St-Juste represents a mid-tier signing to the cornerback room, the kind of signing that I was, quite frankly, a little scared that the Packers might pursue. While it’s true that St-Juste put together an extremely impressive 2025 season, there is no guarantee that he’ll be able to build upon that effort in 2026. As of now, there is no guarantee that St-Juste will even be able to secure a starting spot in the Packers defense next season.
So, when it’s all said and done, what is the idealistic (yet realistic) outlook for the cornerback room next season? When the 53 man roster was unveiled at the end of the 2025 preseason, they carried six cornerbacks on the roster: Nate Hobbs, Keisean Nixon, Carrington Valentine, Bo Melton (technically listed as a cornerback, at least!), Kamaal Hadden, and Micah Robinson. If we were to follow a similar trajectory for the 2026 Packers, it probably looks something like this: Keisean Nixon, Carrington Valentine, Benjamin St-Juste, Bo Melton (again, at least technically a corner, or maybe he only counts as half?). That leaves the final two spots to be filled by a combination of rookies, UDFAs, and the practice squad members of last year: Shemar Bartholomew, Kamal Hadden, Tyron Herring, and Jaylin Simpson. My guess as of now is that we’d see one rookie, Kamal Hadden, who MLF had extremely high praise for at the end of last season.
As long as the starting nickel spot is being held down by safety Javon Bullard, that means this group only needs to fight over two starting spots. The inside track belongs to Nixon and Valentine, but I think I speak for most Packers fans when I say some change is surely needed there. Between St-Juste and a rookie, I’d expect one of them to take the starting spot away from Valentine.
All this is, of course, fun speculation at this point in the offseason. The Packers have a ton of work left for them over the course of the offseason, but it all starts right here.